Monday, 10 September 2012

Summer trippin in the Loup!

Hey up everybody!! Its been a while since the blog got an up date. So here's one....

Well, we have just returned back from another amazing Euro
trip to the south of France. It sounds crazy to think that we were out there
for 5 weeks as it just went so quickly!Me,
Ed and Ethan all headed down in a very full Mazda bongo!

So we spent the majority of the time in this huge gorge just
north of Nice called the Gorge du Loup and most of this time was spent climbing
at the world famous Deverse sector. It was an incredible place to climb with
some of the steepest and hardest routes in the world all packed into this one
cliff. Tuffa’s and chipped pockets was the name of the game here. So yeh, a
pretty wicked place to be if you like that kind of stuff. During the time we
were there, some fairly amazing sends went down from a lot of people, including
three 9as by some Euro beasts!! It was a pretty hard place to get used to as
everything was just soooo hard and steep! I found the style of the climbing
there pretty tough and didn’t quite get the sends that I was hoping for from
the trip but still managed some stunners. Ed as per usual crushed most routes
he got on and got some amazing sends!

Here were some of the highlights of the gorge Deverse Satanique 8a, Cascade 8a, Sika 8a, Arrow head 8a, Welcome to the jungle 8a, Quassai 8a+.

Then for the last week we needed a change, so headed across
to Chateauverte near Aix and did some awesome 40metre pump fests as well as a
few bouldery offerings. It was a tad warm but a great place to unwind and
finish the trip off. The top routes were Atlantis
8a, Bill boullette 8a, Le Diktateur
7c+ and Alexandre du blocos 7c+.

All in all a great trip was had with over 100 routes climbed
on amazing cliffs in a beautiful area of southern France. So, apart from spending
20 euros each in a posh campsite for the first couple of days because we didn’t
know where to stay, the rest of the trip we didn’t spend a penny and dossed in
a picnic spot with the best view in the world! There were some pretty spicy moments bumping
into the police, park rangers, the mayor and a lot of other stressful moments
that got people a bit pissed off but we had some pretty rad times as well.

Big Up to everyone we met out there, cheers bru's!! Bring
on the next trip hey!

Oh yeh and last thing is a massive big up to Ethan and Tanja for the photo's. We stupidly forgot our camera so everything was either taken on his mobile or her camera! Cheers guys! Check out his blog for a cool write up and more photos.